CW: suicidal ideation
Firstly, an apology. I've posted here a couple of times during low moments and then never followed up. Received a lot of helpful and sympathetic comments each time and it's kinda shitty I've never even updated my original posts about things being better (because they are).
Onto the meat. Between a couple of long-term relationships and long periods of not really looking for a partner, I hadn't realised I'd managed to get to my late 20s without ever having to 'date'. Both my serious relationships were friends that progressed onto the next level.
Emotionally, this stuff is devastating. Matching with someone who seems interesting and attractive, and they cannot/will not genuinely engage in conversation. Having an amazing conversation with someone in an evening, and then nothing ever again.
Worst are all the feelings associated with RSD when you're not sure there's even a problem. But you are certain there's an issue. How'd you explain that to anyone? How'd you explain that to them?
Idk why I'm posting this rant. I'm sorry for disturbing you all. I don't even want someone to tell me I'm wrong or right or anything else. Selfishly, all I want is for someone to tell me:
'Yeah, no, you're right there's something wrong with you in particular. You really will never be happy and you're right, you shouldn't be here. No, you're absolutely right, there's an unplacable ugliness to you that you can't fix and everyone will always notice.'
I don't know what I'd do if someone confirmed all my worst fears but I think it'd make me feel better? Like things made sense? Like I was correct about something for once.
Sorry again.
Dating requires incredible mental resilience. People are traumatized. People are selfish. People are rude. People are struggling. You will have to be able to deal with all kinds of unpleasant behaviors.
Most of the time, these unpleasant behavior have literally nothing to do with you, because people are just self-centered, the hero of their own story, not seeing others as truly equal, putting you into neat little boxes you don't really fit in, or so many other reasons.
Even if you're the most perfect person in the world, literally the most attractive, literally with perfect people skills, you'd miss out on at least 70% of connections just because of the random shortcomings of the other person or tertiary events. So you have to be able to deal with the fact that most interactions will not work out.
But for your and everyone's psyche, every failure is a blow to the ego. So you will always get more blows to your ego than getting it stroked with a success. So it's completely natural to feel like you do, that there's an issue with you. But it's just simply not true.
The only way to do this dating thing is do it exactly as much as you can handle another rejection. Optimally, you'll be so comfortable by yourself that you literally don't care about rejection, because you're so comfortable already anyway, so why should a rejection matter? You'd just return to being comfortable alone.